Posted
by
timothyon Thursday January 17, 2013 @02:44PM
from the beats-google-drive-skydrive-and-dropbox dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Kim Dotcom on Thursday used Twitter to reveal some interesting new tidbits in regards to his upcoming Mega service, which will be hosted at the New Zealand-based domain Mega.co.nz. Two days before the service is to go live, Doctom says he plans to offer 50GB of free storage to all members and is also working on bringing over users' Megaupload files and data, but has so far run into legal issues." To say that Kim Dotcom has "run into legal issues" is like saying that Julian Assange is having a sleepover at the Ecuadorian embassy.

While I really support this effort, and I understand why he is basing in NZ (which will bend over backwards to be proper after that last screwup) I question the wisdom of calling the entire thing megaconz... Not exactly trust inspiring...

â" n
1. any right-wing nationalist ideology or movement with an authoritarian and hierarchical structure that is fundamentally opposed to democracy and liberalism

Now the Republicans have been philabustering every single bill that comes up, thereby circumventing the democratic process. Who's the fascist? Hint: It ain't O.

That is not an accepted definition of fascism - the real definition has absolutely nothing to do with concepts such as "right-wing" or "liberal."

Methinks perhaps thou art the one who doesn't understand what's being said - I would recommend getting your definitions from accepted authorities on the matter, like a dictionary, instead of whatever politically motivated blog you pulled that offal from.

I found it very ironic his original post was -5 troll and his clarification is +4 insightful, I have to give him his kudos. I am a little sorry that I leached a +5 funny for my response to his clarification but hey the karma gods are generous today.

What worries me more, is what brain is controlling that legal hand . . . ? It doesn't seem to be the US government at all. It's more like the US Justice Department was acting like private cops working for Hollywood.

The same for the Aaron Swartz case. Who was driving that prosecution . . . ?

If this article didn't involve Kim Dotcom, would this have even made Slashdot? Basically, I'm pretty sure this article is only posted to give people the opportunity to fap over digital piracy and RIAA/MPAA bashing.

Nothing good about that limit, I think it's actually quite stingy compared to the competition. Additionally, If there was a limit on the old MU, I never hit it... and I had a lot more than 50GB in there.

I don't like dropbox simply because its software and registration is pretty invasive. But if I was seriously considering trying to making money of a project, I would try ad-fly. I have used drop box for family photo transfers.

I'll admit maybe my original criticism is not the best. It may not even be a good reason to avoid them. Call me crotchety, I just signed up and downloaded whatever they had, tried it, decided I didn't like it and moved on. Proceeded to uninstall the extra software, and send their mail to my junk folder.

Let's assume I'm just creating and editing some textures for a game to share with a local modding community, and not my family or facebook friends (I don't like social networking sites). I only want to upload once anonymously and not be hounded for update, or whatever. So that is how I see dropbox - the social network of filesharing sites. Microsoft was doing something like this. I didn't buy into that service either. Mega would work in this regard as long as you used an anonymous email registration. You ca

I am sorry. I lived staunchly in keep it simple stupid land. But I can see your point. In my defense I never looked at it from your perspective. Look at Adobe's updater software which gets installed alongside their pdf viewer which would automatically install McAffee unless you unchecked it. This actually required software to be installed to view pdf's. But experiences like that make users suspicious of anything that has been done via-web based java in the past and now all of a sudden requires MSI installat

Come on! Not even 100 words in the summary, the name of this (by now) VERY well known dude appears exactly 3 times, and you can't even spell that right? Or at least make the same name appears each instance?

What does/. pay these editors for??? I mean, it's not like they are needed to select what stories to run on the frontpage (see firehose).

Come on! Not even 100 words in the summary, the name of this (by now) VERY well known dude appears exactly 3 times, and you can't even spell that right? Or at least make the same name appears each instance?

What does/. pay these editors for??? I mean, it's not like they are needed to select what stories to run on the frontpage (see firehose).

C'mon, give/. editors a break Their job is tough and unforgiving.

Why, in the process of preparing this very story, the editor stumbled, ripped their underwear, and severely stubbed their vagina!

Then don't. Why do you think you need to support them? Just because it's the standard/. view?

Kim is a career criminal and a scum. That some of his enemies are also yours doesn't mean he is your friend. On the contrary, he and his illegal, commercial copyright violations are the exact kinds of things that Hollywood wants and needs to lobby for more and harsher laws, and the last thing those of us interested in a balanced and reasonable copyright need.

No, he hasn't. He made a point of seemingly conforming to the law, while behind-the-scenes, copyright violations were invited and supported.

Megaupload was just like a fence shop who said that they'll remove any item that the owners told them was stolen from the shelves, while still accepting truckloads of stuff from known thieves in the backroom.

But that isn't even my concern. My concern is that total idiots consider them "on our side". Kim is on nobodys side but his own. Our friends are the FSF, the EFF, E

Here's what I assume when I'm on wild speculations: The whole thing is orchestrated and Kim is in on it. Maybe not entirely voluntarily, but more on a "do this and we'll let you get off easily" way, but it wouldn't be the first time he sold out his partners.

Him starting up the next identical thing right away is very, very telling. Only a total fool or a total egomaniac would do that - or someone who wants to give the Hollywood lobbyists a "see, that is why we need even more

From the Embassy:Assange: this sleepover is amazing. Want to play truth or dare?Ecuadorian Ambassador: No, Julian, can we just go to sleep?Assange: How about we do some prank calls? I got a shit list we can call.EA: Can we add Amnesty International and the EFF on there?Assange: Sure, as long as we can call ObamaEA: Why not? I got a red phone over there.::sound of teenage girls chuckling::

The site isn't live yet, but the information pages are *really* interesting.

1) Distributed storage?

Mega is inviting people to be a mega storage node. Allocate some storage and bandwidth on your system, and Mega will store files there.

This would imply (to me, at least) that the site will use distributed storage. If I'm right, that means it will be nigh impossible for any authority to take the data offline in a single action. All Kim needs is a list associating peoples' files with where they are physically stored, and it won't matter to *the users* if the site gets taken down - he can just publish the list and everyone can get their files from the cloud storage nodes directly. (I'm probably overlooking a more elegant solution, such as unpublicized backup domains which can be announced as alternate portals if the main site gets taken down.)

Also - They propose to *pay you* for being a mega storage node. That won't be popular, no sirreee...

2) Published API?

They propose to publish a comprehensive API and software dev kit. In their words: "We hope to see a thriving ecosystem of crypto-enabled third-party client apps emerge."

We don't need to trust Kim for security. Open source applications will sprout like weeds, and you can choose from whichever publisher you trust. (The Firefox plugin from Mozilla perhaps, or the version put out by the Apache foundation...)

2) Encryption == No liability?

In their words: "You hold the keys to what you store in the cloud, not us."

This neatly avoids any liability on their part for hosting content, and at the same time protects everyone's online content from random web snooping by the likes of CIA, NSA, and various repressive regimes. Including Chinese hackers.

IANAL, correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems that attaching liability to this type of storage would require new laws, and a sea shift in the way liability is determined. Any such change would be unworkable, since it would also encompass broad swatches of the existing internet.

3) Better functionality

The site mentions improvements in functionality, such as having servers near the customer for speed (due to the distributed nature of storage), complete disk functionality, and so on.

====================

I have to say, this *really does* look like it will change the world, and will be the future made manifest.

Go check out Mega.co.nz and see for yourself - it's an interesting read.

(Oh, and if you would like to help erode the influence of the media conglomerates (RIAA, MPAA, &c), getting a free account and storing your legally owned files would be a drop in the bucket towards that end.)

"Unfortunately, we can't work with hosting companies based in the United States. Safe harbour for service providers via the Digital Millennium Copyright Act has been undermined by the Department of Justice with its novel criminal prosecution of Megaupload. It is not safe for cloud storage sites or any business allowing user-generated content to be hosted on servers in the United States or on domains like.com /.net. The US government is frequently seizing domains without offering service providers a hearing or due process."

Get out the popcorn, this should be fun to watch!

(And a P.S. for web designers: mega.co.nz is a model of website design efficiency. Easy to read, short and to-the-point, graphics and layout which improve the presentation, and fast loading.)

Disclaimer 1 - This is my systemDisclaimer 2 - The System (ScatterBytes.net) is under heavy development and not currently online. I maybe shouldn't be advertising this on Slashdot, but I would like to get some feedback and if you are interested in adding a storage node or using a client, please respond here or through the website,

I currently only want people comfortable with a Linux and a CLI and with the stomach to host data on a system in beta.

You get paid to be a storage node and other than being generally always on, it doesn't matter what type of equipment you use because the system is highly redundant and node outages are expected. Payments are handled through Paypal - both sending and receiving. I'm working on a guide to use a Raspberry Pi as a storage node so that initial costs and power usage will be minimal. The Pi would also double as media/file storage for a local network.

As a client you choose how much redundancy you want. Anywhere from 2 to 20 (or more) mirrors for your data. You can also add parity. After encrypting and splitting a file, the client uploads the pieces to different storage nodes (assigned by a control node), which transfer those pieces to other storage nodes for replication. ALL communication is encrypted and nodes are verified using X.509 certificates signed by a scatterbytes.net CA. Files are encrypted by the client and only the client has the key so ONLY the client can read the data.

There's no way I would consider pooling considerable disk space, bandwidth usage, and number crunching time from my machines enough to get paid if it means I must give out all my info to the online US payment processing corporation that is an essential part of the status quo of the moneyed banking elite that took Megaupload down in the first place. You would be a fool for not learning from the mistakes that have already been made: in 2013 you are still going to base your financial payments between your com

You make some good points. I value my privacy and others' so I do want to offer payment options that respect privacy. I've done some initial study on bitcoin including trading for currency as that would be essential. I would appreciate any suggestions on implementation using bitcoin.

If I'm right, that means it will be nigh impossible for any authority to take the data offline in a single action. All Kim needs is a list associating peoples' files with where they are physically stored, and it won't matter to *the users* if the site gets taken down - he can just publish the list and everyone can get their files from the cloud storage nodes directly.

Yes, yes, a joy indeed. Of course it would expose storage-holders to Dotcom-treatment (men in black helicopter in, take your servers and arrest you, even if though charges won't stick a year or two later).

I look forward to signing up for the Dotcom experience by becoming one of the storage nodes.

The problem with Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum and his illegal theft operation is that he is clearly attempting to facilitate the theft of assets legally owned by folks other than himself, depriving these legal owners of income from their legally owned assets.

That's not a problem for me.

It's reached the point where I just don't care about the feelings or rights of the "legal owners of income" any more.

For lots of issues there are mitigating circumstances, ways to "consider the other person's point of view", ways to frame the discussion as shades of grey.

Not for these people.

I don't care about the arguments any more. No mitigating circumstances, no heartfelt appeals to starving artists, no reframing of the situation from their point of view.

There comes a point when considering their view is too much of a reach, and you admit to yourself that these people are just plain evil.

Buddah fought against evil, and so do I.

Mr. Dot-Butt-Cum is a despicable low-life (really) whose illegal operation will do more good for the world than all the media conglomerates put together. I applaud him for his sense of hurt, his outrage, and most importantly - his sense of doing something about it!

It's a problem for you, not a problem for me. I wonder how many people think it's not a problem for them, either?

Unlike traditional Western societies of the time, many Caribbean pirate crews of European descent operated as limited democracies. Pirate communities were some of the first to instate a system of checks and balances similar to the one used by the present-day United States and many other countries. The first record of such a government aboard a pirate sloop dates to the 17th century

Tor itself does not directly pay the bad guys (TM). I can see allot of legit people getting money from Kims new service (minecraft community folks, who basically work on the honor system anyway) and allot of other people getting ripped off. And allot of illegal shit becoming harder to track and people generating revenue for it. This is a bad thing in general because it paints the good guys red with all the evil Indians. If Kims new company did some moderation they would look better in the publics eyes, but

Except New Zealand is the only country fighting for Kim Dotcom against US extradiction. Hence.co.nz. It was going to be Me.ga but (as posted here too) that domain was revoked the moment he announced it.

Do you get 500GB of storage if it's not pirated? For pirated content, they can usually merge duplicates with the other copies of the same pirated content. If it's unique content, they really have to store it.

Will they support Mecurial or some other revision control system? I'd like to store Autodesk Inventor engineering design files for my personal projects, which are many gigabytes of binary files if you keep all the revisions. 500GB on Dropbox is $500 per year, and Github gets upset if you store big

So the execs at MGM, Warner, AOL, MSNBC, Sony, and all those other media corps have a right to sit on their ass playing CoD all day too? Are you one of them, worried about your monopolies? Though I think Sony is probably one of the least evil offenders in this regard, they just defend their turf enough to not get steamrolled.

Thats just one industry, not even all of them.

Every single thing I used mega-upload for was legit. Mods for oblivion, quake, and other gaming uses.

Further under Kim's old model, the people who uploaded content benefited, if you uploaded your own content you actually got compensated for it, even if it was still pirated a bunch. Meaning Kim didn't run an exclusive monopoly on his ass sitting entrepreneurial lifestyle.

I would make the argument that he screwed over the big monopolies, but not the individual small creators, who couldn't get published by the likes of EA, or Time Warner, or MGM. Plus he facilitated fair use, such as taping NFL and redistributing it, because fuck all people use to be able to do that. The internet made it easier yeah. The NFL also didn't go out of business. I think they've made a profit each and every year. There's no actually creativity in that, just the buying of good equipment and talent to tape already planned events. So maybe the only thing setting apart major networks from people with their home camera's is quality.

But you know, things change. Maybe we should support peoples individual rights to profit from the same thing major companies are syndicating. Might help the economy too.

Though I think Sony is probably one of the least evil offenders in this regard

I guess you've forgotten about XCP, eh? I surely never will, having been a victim. When was the last time Universal deliberately planted vandalous malwars on their customers' machines and called it "DRM"?

Oh yeah the rootkit. Your right, got me there. Sony BMG music group also I guess. But is Sony Universal really "Sony" or an American front or shell for their video industry. It gets confusing you start researching who owns what. I am thinking Sony, as in plain old hardware Sony. Or Sony Entertainment Corporation. Sony has allot of studio's.

I would tend to agree, but thats like blaming the people behind originally Blizzard for Vivendi-Activision, at that point it starts to grey out a bit in my mind. And knowing corporate politics, my father worked for Evens-and-Southerland, that sometimes one division can do something to harm the entire company.

I'm not trying to exonerate them. Just thinking and speculating (speculation) is the first step, while not an actual factual understanding of things.

After doing a bit more research, there is no Sony Universal, so it would be Sony Entertainment. Sony and universal got into a spat over betamax in 1984, but thats far reaching for conspiracy.

I think Sony, just bowed down and developed the rootkit to make their service look better to the producers, Sony, being the distributer in this case. If I had the rootkit I don't know, I also didn't have autoplay enabled on my computers. So bad Sony =/ I personally have a love hate relationship with them. Because they f

Sony does an old japanese 'business tactic' where a large company spawns off all it's little sub-interests into 'companies' that share part of it's name and claim they are independent so when something goes wrong, or they want to shuffle profits around and get huge tax breaks while claiming losses, it's easy, and quasi-legal. If anything goes wrong, they just declare that it was that subsidiaries fault, and not really Sony's, so you can't nail Sony to the wall for it's activities since they claim to have no control or responsibility over what the subsidiaries do, despite their iron grip control.It's kind of like putting sock puppets on your hands, then mugging some people, and when you get caught, blame it on the sock puppet, and claim innocence for yourself. In an act a attrition you remove the sock puppet and throw it on the ground and turn you back on it. Meanwhile the now defunct sock puppet had already transferred the money from the muggings to another sock puppet, and it is now sitting safely in your wallet, and since you are 'innocent', so it the money and your acquisition of it. After you've successfully flummoxed your accusers, you don yet another sock puppet and continue the charade.It's apparently related to the stunts involved in Hollywood Accounting where they do such things as rent their own equipment to themselves, charge for the renting, and the depreciation and usage of the equipment, among many other dirty tricks, and claim the movie as a massive loss despite making a large amount of money way beyond their total costs of production and promotion, etc.A friend who's got some kind of degree in business told me it's kind of like a reverse shell corporation, but honestly, I don't really understand how shell corporations really work.So, you readers can take it however you like, but don't for a second believe Sony is anything like innocent. (I'm pretty sure that applies to all big corporations, but still...)

True. His sole purpose in life is money and fame. If you know his history, you'll have to agree. He doesn't care for the law, good and evil or the copyright mafia. He's not your friend. He just happens to rob the bank you hate.

I know the concept is hard to grasp for many these days, as things like the US presidential elections have been turned into a "choose the lesser of two evils" campaigns. Take a step back and realize that by choosing the lesser of two evils you still support evil. If I were religious, I'd say it's the most devious trickery of the devil.

How is he being scammed or conned when he got what he wants, he wanted somewhere to throw his files and they let him. You seem to be under the impression that Dotcom is some evil person when all he does is chase money. He may have screwed up in his past (he used to act as a malicious hacker) but he was punished and paid his debt to society and is now just running a file locker service what is put there by others is not his responsibility.

You're thinking of plagiarism. Copyright infringement is infringing someone's copyright, which is their legal right to control distribution of their works. When you distribute a work in a manner that the copyright owner does not allow, you are committing copyright infringement. You should use the proper terminology instead of trying to redefine things to what you want them to mean, and then saying that those who don't agree with your redefined terms need to "learn english".

Rapidshare was, at least at the time, terrible in terms of file size and speed.

Dropbox is great, but total storage size is poor.

I'm speaking of free accounts of course. I have a lot of film student friends. They need a convenient way to exchange raw footage securely. Nothing free has had enough storage space and speed to be useful, and they're too cheap/poor to pay.

And before anyone asks--we looked into ownCloud. It would be the perfect solution, if not for the fact that ISP monthly caps are too costly to get around in our area.

Most of the files I'm talking about were hosted in multiple places as well. Rapidshare, mega, filefront, game spies old service before it combined with filefront (or maybe I have that backwards). There's a decades worth of file sharing history to get right there, which I'm kinda just going to lazily assume most people know off hand.

Well they have not shut down any emulator for Everquest (SOE), and they were fairly decent about letting people install Linux on PS3's. I don't have a money trail to follow to see how much they have lobbied for as for draconian protection for their business model. I think Disney and some of the major US TV networks may be worse in the long run or overall terms. Could the rootkit be construed as a direct violation of internet cracking laws, yeah.

Kim made millions of selling bandwidth and 'cloud storage'. It should be of no more concern for him that pirates were among his customers than owners of toll roads should be that stolen cars, cars filled with stolen goods (or even murdered people) and similar were using their product. He never sold any downloads, illegal or otherwise; everything were available for free if you could be bothered to wait for a slow download.